We live in strange times, but then, you don’t need me to remind you of that. We are dissipated and scattered, sermonized and patronized and intellectually euthanized. These are revolutionary times though some don’t believe it; some won’t accept it and some will only whisper about it in the dark.
We are no longer what we once were; we have become something which our past would despise. I remember in that halcyon little Chicago suburb of my youth buying cigarettes in a (...)read more, comments...

By David Glenn Cox
I have been at loose ends now for two, could it be going on three years? Without a phone or an address to call my own, I have access to these things but they aren’t mine. For the last six months I have been staying like Dick Cheney, in an undisclosed location. I wonder now, if I’ve become a gentleman of the road? I’ve been placing an ad in Craigslist offering to do day labor, I’ve built fences, stained decks, built brick retaining walls. No job (...)read more, comments...

By David Glenn Cox
Why did President Barack Obama choose this week to bring up Israel and the 1967 borders as a basis for peace negotiations? It will raise a lot of hackles, but in the end it will become a tempest in a teapot. Israel will never give up one inch of ground under any circumstances, nor will the US pressure her to do so. This is a diversionary tactic, kicking the cat to cover the truth and the truth is bad. It is as bad as the truth can come.
Boston Globe- Nearly two years (...)read more, comments...

by David Glenn Cox
I’ve been watching a magic trick, just another of many that I’ve witnessed over the years. Funny thing about magic tricks is that even though you don’t know for sure how the trick is done, you do know that what you’ve just witnessed isn’t the truth. The only thing that you can ever count on to be the truth in the United States is that you are never told the truth.
I’ve seen a President killed with a sniper rifle with a bent site and (...)read more, comments...

by David Glenn Cox
There comes a time when the Gordian knot must be cut when the systems and processes which might have been used to correct the errors and injustices of the meandering course of human affairs have been broken and have become decrepit. But worse still, it is when these processes have not become broken or decrepit but have been intentionally mutilated and deformed into a monstrosity.
I began this article before the events in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race were announced. (...)read more, comments...

By David Glenn Cox
Hindsight is 20/20, you can look back throughout history and choose any three events and the future becomes explained. The American Revolution 1776, the French Revolution 1789, the terror 1793 – Napoleon 1799.
The American Revolution financed in part by France, helped to deplete the French treasury in what Churchill called, “the first world war.” The depleted treasury exacerbated the domestic miseries of the French people, while the idea of (...)read more, comments...

By David Glenn Cox
There is good journalism and then there is bad journalism and then there is reprehensible journalism. The reprehensible journalist is akin to the kid whose parents worked two jobs so he could attend the Julliard school of music. Only to graduate and take a job with Muszak rewriting Black Sabbath songs to be used as elevator music with a Paul Anka impersonator singing, “I am Iron Man.”
It is reprehensible not just because it is bad, but because the (...)read more, comments...

By David Glenn Cox
Those of you who know me well, know I’m a buy American first kind of guy. I don’t drive foreign cars or eat fancy foreign cheeses but you just can’t grow a good Brazil nut in Omaha. There are sometimes when importation is the only answer to a national shortage.
Don’t ask me why, maybe its the fluoride in the water or all those atom bomb tests back in the 1950’s but this country is facing a serious testicle shortage. It would certainly seem (...)read more, comments...

By David Glenn Cox
I sometimes don’t know who I am anymore. As I was walking to the library and I saw a younger man in a business suit buying gas. I thought to myself, “I used to be him.” He looked well dressed but not prosperous driving a company car and a little unsure of the neighborhood and it made me smile. Then I saw a guy in his twenties shaggy haired pulling out of some apartments and he looked as if he was trying to shake off last night’s buzz or maybe (...)read more, comments...

By David Glenn Cox
I walk these quiet empty streets like a post-apocalyptic omega man surrounded by quiet and empty stores and houses. Past the fast food joints still not busy even at dinnertime and car washes not busy on a beautiful Saturday morning. I fell into some money this week and thought I’d celebrate by going down to the sport’s bar about a mile from the garage and watching some college football.
I told my son where I was going and he screwed up his face and asked, (...)read more, comments...

Monday is Labor Day, a national holiday in America that’s come to be as meaningless as the Easter bunny. It is a holiday that millions of Americans struggled to bring into existence. Hundreds more died or were maimed or beaten, they were bloodied but they were not bent. They were shot at by national guardsman, policeman, sheriffs and hired thugs but were not turned back. They were turned out of their company houses during snowstorms. They had firehoses turned on them in subfreezing (...)read more, comments...

By David Glenn Cox
The summer heat is fading and it brings a welcome relief but also a worrisome fear that the winter cold is right behind it. Each season brings with it a different set of problems each inverse of the other but still mainly the same. The changing season is making me angry because it marks the passage of time and I am still here. I’m still living in this nasty fetid little room hiding out like Anne Frank and dreaming of a job in concentration camp America.
While I (...)read more, comments...

By David Glenn Cox
I was recently rereading Machiavelli and he said, when you acquire lands where the prince is unpopular you come as a redeemer. When you acquire lands where the price is popular you extinguish his bloodline. These things are the products of the hands behind the curtains and the powers behind the throne.
Now to the hands behind the curtains and the powers behind the throne George W. Bush was a very successful President. He cut taxes for the rich and created wars of (...)read more, comments...

By David Glenn Cox
There are a great many differences between Ben Bernanke and myself other than that he has a good paying job with all the perks and benefits. He judges the economy by the reports he reads say and I judge it by what I see and hear. He reads his reports of economic performance while I merely look out the window.
“The U.S. economy remains “weak” and “fragile” and has a “significant” chance of falling back into a recession, Harvard (...)read more, comments...

By David Glenn Cox
Alan Simpson broke the cardinal rule in Washington; he said what he really thought. Turn about is fair play so here’s what I really think. His comments come as no surprise to Barack Obama. Simpson wants to gut Social Security and Barack Obama has hired Simpson to do his dirty work. A plan to rob from the elderly the disabled and the needy of their little bit of dignity to pay the debts for the wealthy, the careless and the warmongers. It is a crime beneath human (...)read more, comments...

By David Glenn Cox
Without Internet access writing becomes harder and harder to do. It’s about a four-mile hike to the library up hill both ways because of the mid-nineties heat. Sometimes I feel as if I’m losing it and then sometimes I feel like I’m only beginning to get it. I made the hike the other day to check my E-mail and to reconnect with the world.
I arrived about nine in the morning and was greeted by a sign, which said, “New Wednesday hours One to Eight (...)read more, comments...

By David Glenn Cox
Winston Churchill once said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they’ve tried everything else.” The old boy had us dead to rights, as a nation we don’t learn and we don’t take advice. Churchill’s bromide could be applied to Wall Street as well with one slight alteration. “You can always count on Wall Street to do the right thing when pigs fly and chickens sing opera.”
Wall Street is a one eyed (...)read more, comments...

By David Glenn Cox
Rage is born of desperation; it is incubated and nurtured by ignorance and neglect. It’s fathered by the unfeeling and uncaring, the safe and secure. Its mother is the destitute and hungry, the needy, those too easily cast off from society as mere statistics. It is a genie that once released from its bottle will summon up all the forces of hell to seek vengeance upon guilty and innocent alike.
"If a modern state is to rest upon a firm foundation its citizens must (...)read more, comments...

By David Glenn Cox
How cold and callous can we become? When, as a society and as a nation, we can undergo a massive earthquake under our very feet and before our very eyes, how can we just ignore its victims?
RealtyTrac, the California-based authority on property trends and valuations, projects 4.5 million home foreclosures before the end of this year. That’s 4.5 million homes, and with four people to a household that is eighteen million people. Eighteen million men, women and (...)read more, comments...

By David Glenn Cox
It has long been offered that politics is the art of telling your constituents to go to hell and then convincing them that they really want to go. It’s the art of convincing them that what they think is good for them really isn’t. Sometimes it’s a promise to make the sunshine brighter or the rain fall on command.
When you ran for office as a Democrat in the good old days you could promise new and better schools, highways and more jobs. It was a pretty (...)read more, comments...

The far-right in Ukraine are acting as the vanguard of a protest movement that is being reported as pro-democracy. The situation on the ground is not as simple as pro-EU and trade versus pro-Putin and Russian hegemony in the region.
When US Senator John McCain dined with Ukraine’s opposition leaders in December, he shared a table and later a stage with the leader of the extreme far-right Svoboda party Oleh Tyahnybok.
This is Oleh Tyahnybok, he has claimed a "Moscow-Jewish mafia" (...)

Your support here: http://www.peaceinsyria.org/support.php
We, the undersigned, who are part of an international civil society increasingly worried about the awful bloodshed of the Syrian people, are supporting a political initiative based on the results of a fact-finding mission which some of our colleagues undertook to Beirut and Damascus in September 2012. This initiative consists in calling for a delegation of highranking personalities and public figures to go to Syria in order to (...)

At first glance, the results of America’s 2012 election appear to be a triumph for social, racial, and economic justice and progress in the United States: California voters passed a proposition requiring the rich to shoulder their fair share of the tax burden; Two states, Colorado and Washington, legalized the recreational use of marijuana, while Massachusetts approved the use of marijuana for medical purposes; Washington and two other states, Maine and Maryland, legalized same-sex (...)

In a 2004 episode of Comedy Central’s animated series South Park, an election was held to determine whether the new mascot for the town’s elementary school would be a “giant douche” or a “turd sandwich.” Confronted with these two equally unpalatable choices, one child, Stan Marsh, refused to vote at all, which resulted in his ostracization and subsequent banishment from the town.
Although this satirical vulgarity was intended as a commentary on the two (...)

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If there is one major inconsistency in life, it is that young people who know little more than family, friends and school are suddenly, at the age of eighteen, supposed to decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, because of their limited life experiences, the illusions they have about certain occupations do not always comport to the realities.
I discovered this the first time I went to college. About a year into my studies, I (...)

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PART II
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Disillusioned with the machinations of so-called “traditional” colleges, I became an adjunct instructor at several “for-profit” colleges.
Thanks largely to the power and pervasiveness of the Internet, “for-profit” colleges (hereinafter for-profits) have become a growing phenomenon in America. They have also been the subject of much political debate and the focus of a Frontline special entitled College Inc.
Unlike traditional (...)

PART I
PART III
PART IV
Several years ago, a young lady came into the college where I was teaching to inquire about a full-time instructor’s position in the sociology department. She was advised that only adjunct positions were available. Her response was, “No thanks. Once an adjunct, always an adjunct.”
Her words still echo in my mind.
Even as colleges and universities raise their tuition costs, they are relying more and more on adjunct instructors. Adjuncts are (...)

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PART IV
When The Bill of Rights was added to the United States Constitution over two hundred years ago, Americans were blessed with many rights considered to be “fundamental.” One conspicuously missing, however, was the right to an education.
This was not surprising given the tenor of the times. America was primarily an agrarian culture, and education, especially higher education, was viewed as a privilege reserved for the children of the rich and (...)

If there is one universal question that haunts all human beings at some point in their lives, it is, “Why do we die?”
Death, after all, is the great illogic. It ultimately claims all, the rich and the poor, the mighty and the small, the good and the evil. Death also has the capability to make most human pursuits—such as the quest for wealth, fame and power—vacuous and fleeting.
Given this reality, I have often wondered why so many people are still willing to (...)

How much corruption can a “democracy” endure before it ceases to be a democracy?
If five venal, mendacious, duplicitous, amoral, biased and (dare I say it) satanic Supreme Court “justices”—John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy—have their way, America will soon find out.
In several previous articles for Pravda.Ru, I have consistently warned how the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision is one of the (...)

Imagine, if you will, that the United States government passes a law banning advertisers from sponsoring commercials on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show or Rupert Murdoch’s Fox (Faux) “News” Network.
On one hand, there would be two decided advantages to this ban: The National IQ would undoubtedly increase several percentage points, and manipulative pseudo-journalists would no longer be able to appeal to the basest instincts in human nature for ratings and profit while (...)

LIVE, from the State that brought you Senator Joseph McCarthy, Wisconsin voters now proudly present, fresh from his recall election victory, Governor Scott Walker!
At first glance, it is almost unfathomable that anyone with a modicum of intelligence would have voted to retain Scott Walker as Wisconsin’s governor. This, after all, is a man who openly declared he is trying to destroy the rights of workers through a “divide and conquer” strategy; who received 61% of the (...)

A question I’ve frequently been asked since I began writing for Pravda.Ru in 2003 is, “Why did you become disillusioned with the practice of law?”
This question is understandable, particularly since, in most people’s minds, being an attorney is synonymous with wealth and political power.
I’ve always been reluctant to answer this question for fear it will discourage conscientious and ethical people from pursuing careers in the legal profession—a (...)